The Lathums performing at TRNSMT Festival 2021 (Gary Mather for Live4ever)
The latest to wear the crown of ‘saviours of guitar music’, The Lathums can make their case better than most.
Long touted for great things, when their debut album How Beautiful Life Can Be hit the top spot on the UK chart recently it was a surprise to all but those who were paying attention.
To be clear, they have an advantage in major label backing, who weren’t above pulling a few stunts; releasing one version of the album on the Friday, and then a deluxe version three days later undoubtedly helped, as did an appearance on BBC Breakfast.
However, no matter how calculated or strategic an album campaign is, it can’t control the reaction the art receives. Judging by the reaction in Bristol (hardly a hotbed of traditional ‘indie’ music) on a Sunday night, no less, it’s little wonder they are clearly having the time of their lives.
It’s a shrewd playlist over the PA in the half-hour before they take to the stage; The La’s, The Jam, The Smiths (obviously) and Arctic Monkeys all warm the crowd’s vocal cords nicely, and are all bands The Lathums are attempting to emulate.
Then the new national anthem, Sweet Caroline, is belted out (someone in their team knows exactly what they are doing) before the walk-on track, Caravan Of Love by The Housemartins. We also get Blossoms, but as The Lathums are big mates with the Stockport crew, that’s forgivable.
The Lathums mastered the art of the singalong long before How Beautiful Life Can Be was released, and opener and early track Fight On fulfills its function perfectly.
Yet the singalongs, of which there are several, also provide the band with the space to plough other furrows. I Won’t Lie is Motown in delivery (with added rambunctious, Lust For Life drums in the mid-section) and, later in the set, the ska-flecked I See Your Ghost gets the crowd skanking like it’s 1979.
The mainstream music press don’t understand bands like The Lathums, who occupy a sort of ‘band of the people’ sub-section which Oasis founded (and Liam Gallagher continues to inhabit), and acts like The Courteeners, Gerry Cinnamon and Stereophonics all purvey. The simplicity is easy to sneer at, but it’s easy to see why; simply put, these songs come from a universal place of truth.
However, it’s interesting to observe the band’s reaction as certain sections of the crowd chant ‘up The Lathums’ between EVERY SINGLE SONG. Only really engaging with it once or twice, after the first half-an-hour singer Alex Moore simply ignores it and talks over the chants. There is only so much you can do with them, after all.
Introducing The Great Escape as the first song he and guitarist Scott Concepcion (who has a nonchalant determination on his face throughout the set) wrote together, one is struck by its first line: ‘Juxtaposition is a predisposition of a pacifist movement suppressing the argumentative’. It’s either deliberately pretentious or knowingly intelligent, but it’s hard to correlate that with the atmosphere they are cultivating.
With as many songs as they now have in their armoury, and a show that comprises little over an hour, a three-song solo acoustic set by the lead singer is a surprising move, and unintentionally lays the foundations for his inevitable solo jaunts.
Although it’s another big singalong (he doesn’t even try the chorus and leaves the crowd to it for All My Life), there is little reason that these songs couldn’t have been given the full band treatment. It’s all very ‘third album’.
When his bandmates return they have changed attire, testament to how sweaty the venue is, before a closing salvo of rockier tracks; although track 1 on the album, Circle Of Faith hints there is even more Smithsian music to come, while Sad Face Baby is a dark and intense beast built over a bass riff.
It Won’t Take Long sounds gnarlier than on record and, while the lighters-in-the-air vibe of The Redemption Of Sonic Beauty, complete with poodle-rock solo, veers into cheese, it has the intended effect.
Sadly for the crowd, who are gagging to mosh like their lives depend on it for set closer Artificial Screens, they can’t quite square that to the beat of the song, albeit through no lack of effort. As the live music stops and Elton John’s I’m Still Standing plays over the PA, the four members of the band do high-kicks in time and slightly milk their applause. But who wouldn’t?
Perhaps it’s just a reflection of modern society, but the speed of The Lathums’ ascendance and everything that comes with it has been breakneck. They’re a Big Band now but ultimately – as proven by the crowd’s response to newbie Sad Face Baby (a song that’s not even out yet) – in grey times, The Lathums are a remedy that speaks to and for the people.
All the marketing in the world can’t control that.